Our Move to the PNW

In response to a question we often get asked...how do you like living in the Pacific Northwest? Are you glad you moved away from your comfort space in Tennessee? I wrote the following...

About three years ago, give or take a few months, we had dinner with a couple we didn't know too well, but had a draw to know them. This was pre-baby life, so conversation went a little deeper than it does when you're having to chase toddlers. We were talking about life dreams and when asked what it was I dreamed of I felt a pit in my stomach. Tears filled my eyes as I realized I had none. [Of course photography has always been a passion but at this point and time there was zero inspiration in that area either.] Before I could register the sentence in my mind, almost as if it were bubbling up from somewhere deep inside my subconscious, I said "I dream of a place where I feel safe to dream." Whoa.

I don't have the slightest clue what the response was or how the rest of the night went. I knew that just verbalizing that silent cry was enough. The night went on and nothing grand happened in the weeks that followed but as I look back now, voicing what I felt was BIG.

We journeyed on from there and when I entered motherhood I was in a happy daze that first year. THIS, this was the unrealized dream. I still feel that in a lot of ways, but after moving to the PNW, I know this is the place crying out that night. I feel surreally alive. Feeling extreme joy, sparks of inspiration in creative areas that have been dormant for years, even some deep emotions I never felt ready to explore...and now do. And these views?! Unreal.

Keep the above in mind when I tell you what our past weekend was like. We woke up Saturday morning EARLY. Like I know we have babies who wake us up early anyway, but we were up and ready to walk out the door by 5:30a. We were leaving to go to a friend's family cabin on Snoqualmie Pass. The long and short of it is...an hour into the 3 hour drive, our car broke down on the interstate, it took two hours for a tow truck to arrive, the boys took a $40 Über because we couldn't all fit the tow truck, once we got to the repair shop we found out that it was our alternator...a whopping $700 expense. THEN they tell us they won't have the part to fix it until the next morning. So we plan to rent a car but no car rental places will come pick us up...and we have a BABY and a toddler (who were REALLY great the whole time...a record-breaking time went between meltdowns) AND it's pouring. Because as fate would have it not only is our car broken down, we are stuck in a rinky-dink town it's also supposed to be the "windstorm of the decade" in western washington.

me devouring a burrito after all the waiting...and harper's general state the whole trip

Firestone graciously gave us a ride to Enterprise where we were able to rent a car for only $26 total (praise God) and drive on down to the cabin. Our nerves were a bit shot and we felt a little sick to our stomach about the amount of money we were about to spend. [We had also *just* dropped $500 on all new tires.] Yet we were overcome with the beauty that is fall in the PNW and I remembered to breathe.

Situations of this sort have happened all along the way since we moved. When we first moved here, Ty's job wasn't ready, we thought we weren't going to get our rental we have, Harper fell and got a head gash, I had an emotionally intense intense birth, tyler could only be off for three days after baby and WE ARE SO TIRED. But the bay is walking distance from our house, we've met some incredible people and our boys are incredible...just to name a few of the many positives to revel in.

We arrived nearly 6 hours late in the cabin and we spent a fantastic, memorable 24 hours with our dear friends and immense beauty surrounding us.

we found a little tree frog!

So, why do I share both stories in one post? Well, I'm learning that (especially in parenting) it's never all "bad" or all "good". Shit happens (literally & figuratively), meltdowns happen by parents and children alike, so I need to revel in the good, live furiously happy if you will and not so eagerly jump to say a large chunk of time was "awful," therefore missing the beauty that is almost always present. And to just BREATH. It's rarely as bad as it seems.